This application makes reference to, incorporates the same herein, and claims all benefits accruing under 35 U.S.C. xc2xa7 119 from an application entitled Method For Homing Head in Ink-jet Printing System earlier filed in the Korean Industrial Property Office on the 22nd day of December 1997, and there duly assigned, Ser. No. 71940/1997, a copy of which is annexed hereto.
1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to a printing system having an ink-jet head, and more particularly, the present invention relates to a method for homing the ink-jet head in the printing system when power supply is cut off.
2. Related Art
A printer is an image formation device which receives data from a host system such as a computer system and then forms a corresponding image onto a sheet of paper.
Generally, a printing system having an ink-jet head is capable of performing its printing operation for characters and pictures through jetting ink via the ink-jet head. The printing system includes an ink-jet printer for printing image data provided from a computer system such as a notebook computer or a desktop computer and also includes an ink-jet facsimile machine for printing the image data to be received or copied thereto.
There is a problem with the printing system or facsimile machine performing its printing operation by use of the ink-jet head in that it discontinues its operation at the currently working place when the power supply is cut off due to power failure. If the ink-jet head discontinues its operation, it cannot work until the power supply is re-provided thereto. It causes the ink included in the ink-jet head to be dried so that the ink is unnecessarily wasted, and that a nozzle of injecting the ink therefrom is blocked up due to the dried ink. As a result, when the printing operation is to be continually performed according to the power supply re-provided to the ink-jet head, the ink cannot be normally jetted via the nozzle to thereby damage the image quality.
I have found that the aforementioned problems can be extremely inconvenient. Efforts have been made to reduce problems in related arts.
Exemplars of recent efforts in the art include U.S. Pat. No. 5,825,381 for Home Position Sensor System For Positioning Print Carriage And Method Thereof issued to Choo, U.S. Pat. No. 5,668,580 for De-Coupleable Print Position Indicator issued to Chan et la., U.S. Pat. No. 5,605,407 for Printer And Its Control Method issued to Hama et al., U.S. Pat. No. 5,158,379 for Printing Starting Position Controller for Serial Printer issued to Moriya et al., U.S. Pat. No. 5,074,690 for Print Head Carriage Homing, System issued to Del Signore, II et al., and U.S. Pat. No. 4,167,345 for Printing Apparatus with Selectively Movable Printing Heads issued to Englund et al.
While these recent efforts provide advantages, I note that they fail to adequately provide a method for efficiently and conveniently solving aforementioned problems pertaining to dried ink.
It is therefore an object of the present invention to provide a method for homing an ink-jet head in an ink-jet printing system by use of driving voltage charged therein when the power supply is cut off, and to reduce the occurrence of blockages of nozzles of an ink-jet head due to dried ink.
To achieve the above objects and others, there is provided with a method for a method for homing the ink-jet head in the printing system when the power supply is cut off, including the steps of charging a given voltage with power supply provided thereto; when a level of the voltage drops less than a reference voltage level during the printing operation, stopping the printing operation; and transferring the ink-jet head to its primary position by use of the charged voltage.
To achieve these and other objects in accordance with the principles of the present invention, as embodied and broadly described, the present invention provides a method, comprising: storing power in a storage unit of an image formation apparatus when said image formation apparatus receives the power; when the power received by said image formation apparatus drops below a predetermined level during a printing operation, stopping the printing operation; and transporting a print head of said image formation apparatus to a predetermined position by use of the power stored in said storage unit.
To achieve these and other objects in accordance with the principles of the present invention, as embodied and broadly described, the present invention provides a method, comprising: storing first power into a storage unit of an image formation apparatus, said first power being outputted from a power supply, said power supply outputting a plurality of voltages; checking when at least one of said plurality of voltages outputted from said power supply drops below a predetermined voltage level during a printing operation of said image formation apparatus, said checking being performed by a voltage detector; stopping said printing operation when said at least one of said plurality of voltages outputted from said power supply drops below said predetermined voltage level during said printing operation; detecting a position of a print head of said image formation apparatus; and transporting said print head to a predetermined position by use of said first power stored in said storage unit.
To achieve these and other objects in accordance with the principles of the present invention, as embodied and broadly described, the present invention provides an apparatus, comprising: a power supply supplying a first power and storing a second power; an image formation unit forming an image on a recordable medium when said power supply supplies said first power to said image formation unit; a print head of said image formation unit being positioned adjacent to a surface of the recordable medium to form said image on the recordable medium; a voltage detector detecting a voltage level of said first power supplied by said power supply; and said print head being transported to a predetermined position when said voltage detector detects that said voltage level of said first power supplied by said power supply drops below a predetermined level, said print head being transported to said predetermined position by use of said second power stored by said power supply.
The present invention is more specifically described in the following paragraphs by reference to the drawings attached only by way of example. Other advantages and features will become apparent from the following description and from the claims.